I pushed my cheek out with my tongue. Ididknow that name. “What’s the Mafia’s favorite hitman doing in Utah?”
He smiled, white and sharp and vicious. “Who do you think got you assigned to Utah?”
The assignment had arrived like all my others: an encrypted message with an address, date, and time. It wasn’t in my pay grade to ask anything about my assignments, but I knew enough to know they didn’t come from men like Butcher.
I folded my arms, waiting for him to explain, not giving him the satisfaction of asking why.
“I have an offer for you,” he said.
I arched a brow. “An offer.”
“I know your story,” he added, lifting a sharp gaze back to mine. “I know you didn’t choose this life. I know what happened with your brother. You help me get rid of the big guy, I help you get revenge.”
Killing the man who’d forced me into this life was obviously something I’d thought about. But this wasn’t a movie—he wasn’t a singular evil. He was one head of a Hydra. If I killed him, then hundreds more, and probablyworse, men would scramble to take his place.
I laughed. “Youcan’t get revenge.”
No one fucking could. This was my life, and it would be my life until I either died or was killed.
He picked an imperceptible piece of lint off his sleeve. “I can when I’m at the top.”
I paused. If anyone knew I’d even discussed this, it wouldn’t be just my death, but the death of anyone I cared about.
I eyed Butcher.
“The head of the Rocky Mountain division is doing some…interesting things,” he continued. “Things that could turn into an opportunity for the right person.”
I didn’t know much about Butcher, but what I did know didn’t make me eager to install him on the Mafia Hydra. Also, I wouldn’t put it past the big guy to send this asshole here as a test.
“Sorry you came all this way,” I said, and reached for my car door.
Butcher stared at me a moment longer, then turned and disappeared across the street, between the buildings.
“I’m not doing this.”
A voice stopped me in my tracks. The woman from the restaurant pushed the door open, holding it for her friends.
“We’re just trying to help,” one of them, a taller man, spoke.
“Suggesting I update my profile to say ‘Tickle me like Elmo’isnothelping.” She laughed, kicking off the door as the last person came out.
Hervoice.
Fuck.
I hadn’t heard her talk. It was somehow both husky and soft and lilting andstrong.
I stared as she walked past—no, mesmerized was more like it—watching her like something out of a movie. The world slowed down, the snowflakes suspended in the air.
There was onlyher.
She didn’t notice me staring like a fucking psychopath as she walked by. Maybe distracted, or maybe she just wasn’t used to looking for threats.
And Iwasa threat.
That filled me with an odd, razor-sharp feeling of protection.
The world sped up, the snowflakes fell, and the woman continued down the street, still laughing. A laugh like fucking spring in winter.
